


5 Things Ray Learns about Felicity and the Arrow (and 1 that changes everything)

by KimBug



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: 5 + 1, Olicity endgame, Season 3 cannon divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 07:05:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18516379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KimBug/pseuds/KimBug
Summary: Learning that his girlfriend is working for the Arrow, and that the Arrow is Oliver Queen, challenges Ray’s perception of them all.





	5 Things Ray Learns about Felicity and the Arrow (and 1 that changes everything)

**Author's Note:**

> Let’s all go back to Season 3. Felicity is dating Ray, Ray is making a super suit, and Oliver is brooding.

1.

It started with a first aid kit.  At least that’s what Felicity called the giant box of medical supplies she brought over to him one afternoon while he was tinkering with a piece of his ATOM suit.

“If you’re going to be running around in that thing,” Felicity told him, pointing to the pieces of the suit that were scattered around the lab, “fighting crime, you’ll need this some of this stuff sooner or later.”

Ray had to admit he hadn’t really thought of that, but seeing as how his first run against the Arrow left him more battered than he expected, he could see how it could be useful.  So he gave Felicity a smile and a cheery “Thanks” and he didn’t think anymore about it, until a few days later when one of his propulsion stabilizers crapped out on an ATOM suit test flight and he made a hard and awkward landing on an apartment building rooftop.  When he got back to the lab and he and Felicity started peeling off layers of equipment, he found that one of the armour plates had dug into his bicep during the impact.  It left behind an ugly gash that had him wincing.

“Let me see,” Felicity said, gently grabbing his arm and turning it towards the light.  “This could probably use a couple of stitches to help it stay closed.  Hang on.”

She walked over to where she had stashed her first aid kit and came back with it, digging through the box to pull out gloves and gauze and disinfectant.  “I really should have organized this better,” she mumbled to herself.

“Don’t worry about it,” Ray said.  “It’s not far to the hospital, it’ll be fine.”

“Oh I can stitch that up for you,” Felicity replied with such nonchalance in her voice that it shocked him.  Without looking up, she started pulling out suturing needles and thread and lining them up in a neat row.  Then she grabbed a small vial of clear liquid and asked “Did you want lidocaine?  Oliver never does but – ”  

She looked at him then, and he guessed he still had his surprised face on because she stopped abruptly and countered with “Or you could go to the hospital, like a normal person.”  She gave him a bit of a sheepish smile.

“You know how to do sutures?” is what his brain finally came out with.

“Well, yeah,” she said with a bit of a shrug.  “It’s not like vigilantes can go to the hospital.  There’s only so many times Oliver can claim a motorcycle crash.  I just don’t know how much of all this,” she gestured around, “you want other people to know about.”

“Right,” he answered, some of his shock wearing off.  “I hadn’t really thought about that.”  There were pros and cons to both secrecy and transparency, but he hadn’t put a lot of thought into which strategy to use long term. 

“Well,” he said, with some of his usual exuberance returning, “since you’re here and you’re so well prepared, why don’t you just stitch it up.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.  “Because Ray Palmer having an accident while inventing something wouldn’t be an unlikely scenario.”

“I’m sure,” he answered.  “Show me what you’ve got.”

And she did.  She stitched him up with a precision that impressed him, making small talk all the while, telling him how Diggle had gotten his medical training from the army, and Oliver had gotten his from who knows where, and that she had been taught along the way.  She told him that the first time she had helped Diggle pull a bullet out of Oliver she almost barfed, then she chuckled about how she’d come a long way since then. 

She did the whole thing, from the injection of lidocaine (where she informed him with a smile he didn’t understand that the correct dose was _not_ the whole bottle), to the neat collection of stitches (four in total), to the gauze dressing over top, without batting an eyelash.  To see that side of Felicity, to hear her talk about bullet wounds and bruised ribs and how blood is impossible to get out of clothing with such casualness, surprised him.  And for the first time since he realized that she had been helping the Arrow, Ray questioned whether he understood exactly what that meant.

 

2.

The second time Ray really thought about what it meant to be a hero also involved the first aid kit in his lab, only this time he wasn’t the one that needed it.

He had been in his office (the boring office, the one he used for paper work and business reports and not inventing anything) when Felicity’s picture flashed across the screen of his phone.

“I’m sending Oliver to your lab,” she said the second he answered.  He could tell by the tone of her voice and the muffled clack of her heels that she was on the move.  “The SCPD have set up shop in the Glades, trying to trap the Arrow.  He can’t come back here right now.”

After a second of being startled, Ray managed to come out with “Ok...”

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask how Oliver will be able to get into the building which, as far as he knew, was locked up for the night.  But before he could get it out, Felicity gave a clipped “I’ll be there as soon as I can” and hung up.

By the time Ray made it up to his lab, Oliver was already there and Ray heard the draw of the bow before he saw it.  The Arrow, hood up, half hidden in the shadows, was the very picture of intimidation. 

“Whoa,” Ray said, putting his hands up, “it’s only me.  Felicity said you were coming.”

The bow lowered and Ray could have sworn he heard an exhale of relief, but maybe it came from him and not Oliver.  Either way, the bow was put aside and Oliver pushed off his hood and mask.

“How did you get in?” Ray found himself asking as Oliver sat on a nearby stool and unzipped his jacket. 

“Roof,” Oliver answered as he shrugged off the green leather, and Ray noticed the shirt underneath was stained with blood.

“I know a couple of ways in and out of this building,” Oliver continued, gingerly pulling the blood stained shirt away from his skin.  “It used to have my name on it, after all,” he said in a tone that Ray classified as somewhere in between amused and angry.

“Right,” Ray said, shaking his head a little.  “And you are the Arrow,” he continued, his thoughts coming out in that stream of consciousness way they sometimes did, “getting in and out of places mysteriously is kinda your thing.  And Felicity sent you here, so I’m sure she knew you wouldn’t have any problems, and wow, that is a lot of blood...”

Oliver had worked the shirt up and over his head, leaving a streak of blood, red and wet smeared across his chest.  He used the shirt to wipe it away, trying to get a better look at the wound it was coming from and Ray couldn’t help but notice, even in the dim light of the lab, the collection of angry scars and marred skin that occupied so much of his torso.

_“You have no idea what he’s been through...”_

Felicity had told him that but, Ray admitted to himself, he hadn’t put a whole lot of thought into exactly what that meant.  He reasoned that everyone had trails in their life, their own personal gauntlet to run.  He had lost Anna, and it was that grief and that feeling of helplessness that had driven him to make the ATOM suit.  But Oliver’s body bore the evidence of physical pain the likes of which Ray couldn’t even imagine.  Everywhere his eyes fell, they found another scar or fading bruise or flash of blood. 

It wasn’t until Oliver said his name in a sharp, questioning tone that Ray realized he was staring.

“You need a first aid kit,” Ray blurted out before turning abruptly on his heel and heading over to where he’d stashed the box Felicity had brought.  He had it in his arms when he heard her heels, sharp and distinctive, rushing into the lab.

“Oliver,” she said, her voice coated with relief.  But when Oliver turned to face her and she caught sight of his bleeding shoulder, her eyes filled with worry. 

“It’s nothing,” Oliver said as if he sensed where her mind was going.  “Just a scrape.  The blood makes it look worse than it is.”

Ray watched as Felicity pinned Oliver with a look and held his eyes for a moment, as if gauging the truth of his words, before giving him a small nod and moving a few steps away to shuck her bag and her jacket.

“Well thanks to Felicity I have a first aid kit,” Ray said, holding the box but not quite sure what to do with it.  After a second of thought, he moved to hand it to Oliver but Felicity stepped in and grabbed it instead.  Just like that night with him, she got out the medical supplies and used them with a practiced ease that still somewhat startled him.

Ray watched as Oliver was patched up (no stitches needed, just an abundance of gauze to stanch the bleeding then a clean covering) and then, with a quick thank you to both of them, he left for home under the cover of his civilian persona.  But the images of those scars, the idea of what they represented, stuck with Ray for a while.

“What happened to Oliver on that island?” he asked Felicity later that night, when his brain just couldn’t seem to keep the question in any more.

Felicity gave him a somewhat startled look before shrugging a little and saying, “He doesn’t really talk about it.”   

“But all those scars...”

“They make him who he is,” she answered.

 

3.

Felicity had a scar on her shoulder.

Ray had noticed it, seen it dozens of times, but had never thought much about it.  It was just a mark, everyone had their share.

But now he noticed its size and shape, and he’d heard Felicity talk of bullet wounds and do-it-yourself medical procedures, and for the first time he really wondered where it had come from.

“A bullet,” she told him one night, as if reading his thoughts, while his thumb traced over the spot.

Ray couldn’t decide if he was shocked or not.

“How?” he asked.

“Working a case,” she said, and she told him about Tockman and the bank and how Sara had stitched her up and Digg had driven her home and stayed with her until the drugs wore off.

When she finished her story, Ray shook his head. “I guess it shouldn’t surprise me anymore,” he said.

She gave him a puzzled look. “What shouldn’t surprise you?”

“How brave you are.”

She blushed a little, and looked away.

“And how crazy your life is,” he added, trying to lighten the mood.

Felicity huffed a laugh. “You have no idea.”

 

4.

It happened more and more, him noticing little things about her, little parts of her life that spoke to the bigger picture of Felicity Smoak.  Like how she seemed to know a lot about weapons (“I don’t like using them,” she had told him, “but I do know a lot about them.”) or how mornings when her coffees were extra-large meant that she’d been up all night working her “other job”. But, despite what he might have thought, learning these things didn’t make him feel like he knew her better.  Instead, the more of Felicity’s secrets that he learned, the more light bulbs that went off in his head, the more questions he had.  Eventually, he started asking them.

“How did you start working with the Arrow in the first place?” he asked her one morning when the bags under her eyes told him that she hadn’t slept much and she’d made a comment about it being a long night at her other job.

She gave him a smirk and said “Oliver may be good a lot of things, but computers aren’t one of them.”  Then she walked back to her desk and Ray realized, with a bit of disappointment, that that was all she was going to give him.

One morning, he was reading the news on his tablet and he came across a story about the Flash in Central City and he started to muse out loud what kind of technology the guy could be using.  When he looked up at Felicity for her opinion, she just smiled and then thoughtfully regarded her yogurt.

“You know, don’t you,” he said, another light bulb clicking on in his head.

“It’s not my secret to tell,” she answered with a seriousness he hadn’t quite expected.  And all he could do was nod and let it go.

Maybe it came part and parcel with the whole secret identity thing, but Felicity was never big on sharing details when it came to what she called “Team Arrow stuff”.  She only talked about it in broad strokes.  At first, he was okay with that, he told himself that he’d wait for her to share. But sometimes he couldn’t help but see it, this huge part of her life that was separate from him, as a barrier. And sometimes he wondered why she was keeping it there.

 

5.

Ray had come a long way from believing the Arrow should be put in jail. He trusted Felicity, and he could see the good that Team Arrow had done, that they were still trying to do. But there was one point that still bothered him, that challenged his ability to be able to see Oliver in a heroic light. Even if it hadn’t happened in “nearly 2 years”, Oliver had killed people. And Ray didn’t believe that any circumstance made that ok.

“When did you start helping Oliver?” he asked one night as Felicity searched through police reports on her laptop. It was late, and she was stretched out on his bed, computer on her lap, while the lights of Starling City glittered through the windows of his apartment.

“Officially,” she said without looking up from her work, “I started helping him when Walter Steele went missing.”

“Is there an unofficially?” he asked, picking up on what she left unsaid.

Her eyes stayed on the computer, her fingers still moving over the keys, but she smiled and said “Oliver used to come down to the IT department with some…unusual requests, that he tried to cover with _terrible_ lies. I knew something was up. Finding out he was the Arrow actually made a lot of sense.”

Wheels started to turn in Ray’s head, research and timelines clicking into place. He asked the next question almost without realizing it. “Didn’t it bother you?”

“Didn’t what bother me?”

“The killing.”

Her fingers went still on the keyboard and she looked up at him, eyes narrowed.

“Of course it did,” she said, a slight edge in her tone.

“But you helped him anyway.”

“Ray,” she said with a sigh of exasperation, “it’s not that simple.”

“I don’t know, I think the idea that you shouldn’t kill another human being is pretty straight forward. Bringing justice doesn’t mean being judge, jury, and executioner.”

“It’s not always about justice,” she answered. “Sometimes it’s about survival.”

“This isn’t Lian Yu Felicity. It isn’t the Wild West. It’s not about survival in Starling City”

“Once was for me.”

Ray blinked at her, not understanding. “What?”

She took a breath, as if stealing herself for what she was about to say.

“Oliver killed a man to save me,” she said. Her eyes were sad. It was reflected in her voice.

“Last year, someone was putting high level street drugs into flu vaccines,” she said. “Oliver was busy with his mother’s trial and Digg had been dosed, so I went by myself to track down a lead. I found the drugs, but the dealer found me, and he used me to draw in Oliver. He took me to Queen Consolidated and held me with a syringe to my neck. When he tried to use it, Oliver killed him. He made that choice to save my life.”

Ray stayed quiet as the story sunk into his mind. He couldn’t help but think of Anna, how dangerous men had taken her life, how he couldn’t do anything to stop it.

Felicity slid the computer off her lap and swung her feet onto the floor. “What Oliver has been through,” she said, standing up, “what he’s survived, it’s meant he’s had to make those choices.”

She started walking towards the bedroom door. She paused a few feet in front of him. “Don’t think for a second he doesn’t carry those burdens,” she said, and then she slipped out the door.

Eyes on her back, Ray watched her go.

 

+1

Ray wasn’t exactly sure how they had gotten here. With the SCPD and the League of Assassins closing in on Oliver, Team Arrow operations had shifted from the Glades into his lab. Oliver wasn’t a fan, that much Ray could tell. It was written all over the stance of his body, the tight set of his jaw. Seeing him like this, it was easy to see him as the Arrow, even without the hood. Ray had to admit it fazed him a little, and he’d give Oliver a wide berth when he had a particular scowl on his face.

Felicity, though, was anything but fazed. She met Oliver’s scowls with a determined expression, or even a roll of her eyes. She argued with him when she thought he was being ridiculous or reckless, told him to calm down when he was getting angry or frustrated. She went toe to toe with the man that made hardened criminals shake with fear, and she didn’t even bat an eyelash. It really was something to see.

Watching them work together, Team Arrow, Ray felt a bit like an interloper. They had a rhythm, a way of knowing what they had to do, of communicating without saying a word. Ray joked to himself that it was like watching an elegant, crime-fighting ballet.

But for as much as he observed Team Arrow, it seemed to take him embarrassingly long to see one thing.

It was already dark when Ray made his way into the lab that night. He was unsurprised that Felicity was already there. Things had gotten worse for the Arrow and, since their base of operations had moved to Palmer Tech, Felicity was spending more and more time working her night job. He was about to go in and offer his help, when the sounds of an argument made him pause.

Predictably, it was Oliver that Felicity was having words with. Their faces were serious and they were focused on nothing but each other.

“I’m going after them,” he heard Oliver say.

“No,” she replied emphatically, “Oliver, it’s the League of Assassins, you’re not taking them on alone.”

“I need to end this.”

“And we will, but with a better plan than you trying to defeat a horde of assassins on your own.”

“It’s just Ra's I need. I can make it in and get to him.”

“I’m not doubting your super ninja skills Oliver, but this is the League. It’s a whole group of super skilled ninjas who kill people for a living. You can’t go in there.”

“This isn’t up for debate Felicity.”

He turned to leave and she reached out for his arm. “Oliver,” she said, pleading with her eyes, her voice.

Oliver studied her face, his expression softening just a fraction. “I’ll come back,” he said in a gentle tone Ray had never heard him use before.

“Promise me,” she replied, her voice just above a whisper.

He couldn’t, even Ray knew that, so Oliver didn’t answer. He just gave her a sad smile and turned to walk away. Felicity’s hand travelled down his arm until it was out of reach.

Ray saw her face, her eyes, and he recognized the look. It was heart-break.

And suddenly he knew. She was in love with him. Felicity was in love with Oliver. And Oliver, the brooding, angry, vengeful vigilante, was in love with her.

The realization stunned him, although, looking back, he knows it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. Once he knew what to look for, he recognized it everywhere.

Felicity cared for him, Ray knew that, but there had also been an unidentifiable _something_ standing between them. An invisible buffer that he kept bouncing off when he tried to get really close to her. He had thought she just needed more time, that his feelings for her had just moved faster than her feelings for him. He knew, now, that wasn’t the case.

Ray would like to say that the brave and noble side of him immediately made the decision to let Felicity go. That the first chance he got, he told her that he understood, and encouraged her to follow her heart wherever it might lead her.

But the truth was that he was in love with her too.

In the end, he did understand her decision, and he wished her and Oliver well. But it wasn’t without some heartbreak. And maybe that was ok, because if there was one thing that Ray was learning, it was that heroes were no strangers to heartbreak. And he had never been more certain that a hero is what he wanted to be.  

**Author's Note:**

> I think that season 3 Ray would have this vision of a hero as a shining beacon of goodness and hope. And Oliver is... not that. I wanted to explore how learning about the Arrow would challenge his perceptions of not just Oliver, but Felicity too.  
> And yes, I stole some dialogue from the show.


End file.
